Dragonfly: NASA And The Crisis Aboard Mir - Hardcover

Burrough, Bryan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0887307833 ISBN 13: 9780887307836

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1998

Synopsis

Presents a behind-the-scenes account of NASA's ambitious and sometimes tumultuous involvement with Russia's problem-plagued MIR space station over three years

About this title

Review:

Bryan Burrough, coauthor of the bestselling Barbarians at the Gate, has a talent for reworking factual accounts so they read like first-rate thrillers. Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir is overwhelming in its scope and breadth of detail, culled from one-on-one interviews and transcripts of recorded conversations between the astronauts and cosmonauts on Mir and Russian Mission Control. Burrough delves deeply into the personal and professional lives of the 11 people who lived aboard Mir from 1995 to 1998. What we soon discover is simultaneously disheartening and fascinating: the men and women who would be astronauts must run a gauntlet of hazings, are judged professionally on their personal lives, and win flight assignments through serendipity as often as through hard work. NASA is controlled by cliques and cults of personality: "People don't speak out, because George makes short work of you if you do.... If you get on his bad side, you won't get a flight assignment...." There are "issues dealing with training and the selection of crews that you don't dare speak up about." The down-to-the-last-bolt descriptions of life aboard the station, from what the air smells like to an explanation of "penguin suits" to the distance between the dinner table and the original, now seldom-used toilet--2 feet--will thrill space enthusiasts. Space may not be "where no man has gone before" anymore, but it nevertheless provides endless dream fodder for those of us left behind on Earth. --Jhana Bach

About the Author:

Bryan Burrough is a special correspondent at Vanity Fair magazine in New York. A former Wall Street Journal reporter, he is the coauthor of the number one New York Times bestseller Barbarians at the Gate. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, Marla, and their two young sons.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0887307833
• ISBN 13: 9780887307836
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 544